.paulryan, whereare you? we need more spending cuts, more entitlement reform and even some tax reform especially business tax cuts to spur economic growth. my two cents. here is an old friend, david walker, founder, president and ceo of the come back america initiative. he knows a lot about this. david, let me ask you this. is boehner wrong to insist that a dollar debt increase should be accompanied by a spending decrease? >> the fact is we need to pay our bills. and i do however think that we have a spending problem. the federal government has gone from being 2% of the economy, 100 years ago. to 24% today. headed to 37% by 2040 absent a change in course. the republicans ought to leverage the sequester and the c.r. not to shut down the government, but we need to reduce spending. we also have to keep in mind if you try to hold the debt ceiling hostage, social security is negative cash flow. therefore, that means you could face a situation where the social security checks don't go out on time. the last time we faced that, it was 1983. and that was the only reason we got reforms. that wo

trillion, we're talking about sort of massive reforms probably along the lines ofthepaulryanbudgetwhich cut $5 trillion in spending. you'd see things like block granting of medicaid and food stamps and, you know, i don't think that they would put in what's called a voucher system or premium support system for medicare. that was, you know, pretty much trounced during the election. but we'll see. you need something with big numbers in order to -- [inaudible] more or less it's probably a smaller debt ceiling increase. and they also need to decide what to do about two other fiscal cliffs that are looming, the $85 billion in sequester cuts that had been put off for two months for the fiscal cliff deal and also the continuing resolution, government funding runs out march 27th. and if a bill's not passed, the government will shut down. now, some thought that republicans would be more willing to use that weapon to try to force cuts because a government shutdown is several orders of latitude less serious than a debt ceiling default. but, you know, behind the scenes appropriators have been